SEEING YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR OF MARRIAGE

The Cause of Marital Discord Usually, several traits or features one individual sees in another can spark feelings and preferences, lead to romance, and result in marriage. When one is smitten, it doesn’t take long for those several traits or features to balloon into a long list of self-convincing reinforcement, which cries out, This could be the one! Many people consider physical attraction between two individuals as the initial attention-getter. Yet others are first drawn to another person’s personality, a caring spirit, or a carefree and fun-loving persona. Some are attracted to that shy introvert, and others are attracted to the interactive extrovert. One would think that if a person married the one to whom they were attracted, whatever the attraction was, wedded bliss would be the outcome. Unfortunately, it often isn’t the result. Why? During my college years in the mid 60’s, the husband-wife duet of Sonny and Cher performed the pop song, “I Got You, Babe.” In 1965 this hit climbed to number one on the pop charts. It idolized the love they had for each other. I remember their fans saw them as the darlings of our day. They were young, charismatic, energetic, and talented. The duo was featured on talk shows and magazine covers. Together, they projected the face of young, committed love. After nine years of marriage, their divorce was finalized in 1975. What happened? Also in the same year that Sonny and Cher’s marriage ended, another married couple came to the musical forefront. Captain and Tennille captured the pop nation’s attention by singing the love song that climbed to number one on the pop charts that year, “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Yet after thirty-nine years of marriage, they divorced in 2014. Why? A Key Component of Marital Failure or Success Why have there been so many divorces throughout culture, be they singers, Hollywood starlets, politicians, businesspeople, parents, white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, the young, the middle-aged, the old, the rich, the poor, the middle-class, the secular, or the religious? Many are divorcing for the first time. Others are divorcing for the second or even third time or beyond that. Two past Hollywood starlets have each married eight different times, and one currently has married nine times! It doesn’t matter what your background, religion, color, ethnicity, or status in life is; your chances for marriage ending in divorce are high. Divorce in today’s America has become an avalanche! People usually marry because they think they are in love. I assume that most newly married couples expect to live together happily for the rest of their days. Why doesn’t love keep many of them together? After all, Sonny and Cher sang, “I Got You, Babe.” Well, that becomes a key component of the problem. I got you, babe—all of you, warts included—and you have me, babe—all of me. If love fails to keep so many couples together, what separates them? A love-smitten individual may initially identify a number of good qualities in his or her potential spouse, which leads to marriage. Throughout the marriage, that list may gradually be replaced with another list, which is just as long, if not longer. And what is the new list about? All the reasons I am done with you, babe! An accumulation of irritations, nasty habits, inconsiderate actions, and other offensive activity surface in one spouse, which negatively impacts the other spouse and may prove too much for the impacted and offended spouse to overcome. What happens? Over time, the unwelcomed actions being exposed or becoming more pronounced in the offending spouse can turn toxic in the marriage. If either spouse is unwilling to address his or her own offensive problems and reduce them—or better yet, work at eliminating them—marital bliss will prove hard to achieve. What about couples who do stay together and in love throughout a lifetime? Is the conscientious overhauling of one’s wrongful ways, undertaken by each spouse, their secret to success? Herein is what I have found. “Marriage doesn’t create problems; it reveals problems” is a declaration that revolutionized my marriage after I heard it many years ago in the early stage of my marriage. I cannot say with certainty where I heard it, but I believe it was from a cassette tape presentation I heard in the early 1970’s by the late Dr. Howard Hendricks, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. Although I could not document the source of the statement, I have come to recognize and appreciate the wisdom within the sentence. If the source was Dr. Hendricks, I want to give credit where credit is due. Some suggest Pastor Rick Warren is the author of the quote I heard, but since he is eight years younger than I, he would have been a teenager when I heard the quote early into my marriage. In fleshing out this nugget when conducting marriage counseling, I explain it in the following manner. The problems of their marriage will be the problems each partner brings to the union. If each person works on himself or herself and does not shift to focus on the partner’s shortcomings, there is a high probability of marital success. Some would argue the opposite is true. They believe marriage is the problem and source of a maelstrom of difficulties undeservedly visited on them, which are brought into an individual’s life by a spouse or an ex. They blame the shortcomings and misconduct of a spouse for virtually all marital woes. They often have a never-my-fault view or a mostly-not-my-fault perspective. If such a mindset describes you, this book will challenge you to examine your marriage conclusions when confronted with facts about you and the things most all intuitively know about the human experience. Read on and accept the invitation (and challenge) to see yourself and your marriage in a new light and from a different perspective, as you look into the marriage mirror. You will find that the Bible and life’s experiences converge to reveal the needed truth about each partner in a marital relationship. Allow me to clarify here. Although I believe marriage doesn’t create problems but reveals them in each partner, there are situations where problems can surface because of the marriage experience. For example, before being married, I had no problem with my choice of mattress. I like a firm mattress, whereas my wife enjoys a soft mattress. While I was single, mattress choice was a nonissue because I could choose the mattress that suited me. I entered marriage, and now my wife and I must figure out how to solve a mattress dilemma. In this sense, marriage can create problems that individuals would otherwise not have to face if they were single. But such problems need not rise to the level of destroying a marriage—unless allowed to do so.